■ft' 



Hollinger Corp. 
P H 8.5 



PR 5419 

.fll 
1876 
Copy 1 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

Edited, with notes, by H. Buxton Forman, 
and printed for private distribution. 

MDCCCLXXVI. 



^ 



[Rosalind and Helen, &c, of which the original title-page is given opposite, 
is a thin octavo volume, printed in the spring of 1819, and consisting of fly- title 
Rosalind and Helen, title-page, 2 pages of preface (called "advertisement"), 
contents, fly-title Rosalind and Helen, a Modern Eclogue, and text pp. 3 to 92. 
On the back of the first fly-title are advertisements of The Revolt of Islam and 
Alastor, and also an imprint, " C. H. REYNELL, Broad-street, Golden-square, 
London." At the end of the book are four pages of Ollier's advertisements, — 
of works by Lamb, Hunt, Shelley, Barry Cornwall, and Oilier. The fly-titles 
and contents, I insert in their places. In a letter to his publisher, dated 
"Leghorn, September 6th, 1819," Shelley says — "In the Rosalind and Helen, 
I see there are some few errors, which are so much the worse because they are 
errors in the sense. If there should be any danger of a second edition, I will 
correct them." — {Shelley Memorials, p. 119.) Whether he revised a copy, 
and, if so, whether Mrs. Shelley subsequently made use of it for her edition, I 
have no positive knowledge ; but I do not discover in the variations between 
her text and his any trace of such a copy, and therefore think she left these 
" errors in the sense " uncorrected. As far as I am aware no entire MS. of 
Rosalind and Helen exists ; but Mr. Garnett tells me of a fragment, written in 
pencil in a note-book, among Sir Percy Shelley's MSS., — the conclusion of the 
poem, — presenting no variation from the printed text. Of the other three 
poems in the Rosalind and Helen volume, the only MSS. I know of are Sir 
Percy Shelley's pencil draft of the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, the variations 
shewn by which, communicated to me by Mr. Garnett, belong to an early stage 
of the composition, — and Mr. Locker's MS. of the interpolated passage relating 
to Byron in the Lines written among the Evganean Hills. — H. B. F.] 



ROSALIND AND HELEN, 



A MODERN ECLOGUE; 



OTHER POEMS 



PEECY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 



LONDON : 
PRINTED FOR C. AND J. OLLIER, 

VERE STREET, BOND STREET. 

1819. 






205449 
5 13 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



[By Shelley.] 



The story of " Kosalind and Helen " is, undoubtedly, not 
an attempt in the highest style of poetry. 1 It is in no 
degree calculated to excite profound meditation ; and if, by 
interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it 
awaken a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception 
of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader 
all that the writer experienced in the composition. I 
resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings 
which moulded the conception of the story; and this 



1 Mrs. Shelley tells us that Rosalind 
and Helen was begun at Marlow, and 
thrown aside till she found it, when, 
at her request, Shelley finished it at 
the Baths of Lucca in the Summer of 
1818; and Lady Shelley (Memorials, 
p. 87) says that a large part of it was 
written in 1817 (when the Shelley's 
lived at Marlow) ; but it is not stated 
whether this was in the Spring or 
Winter, — before or after the composi- 
tion of Laon and Cytlina, which occu- 
pied the summer and autumn. The 
lapse of many eventful months may 
account for some of the inconsistencies 
in detail ; and the fact that Shelley 
had to be urged to finish it at all shews 
how little he prized it, and how little, 
therefore, he would have been likely 
to bring it up to any high degree 
of finish. In a letter to Peacock, 



written from Rome on the 6th of 
April 1819, while this Eclogue was 
being printed, the poet, after enquir- 
ing with some anxiety after the safety 
of his Lines written among the Euga- 
nean Hills, says of Rosalind and Helen, 
" I lay no stress on it one way or the 
other." On the whole, therefore, I 
should imagine that it was hastily 
written with the full knowledge that 
such was the case, and that Shelley 
deliberately declined to reduce it to 
perfection of detail, however willing to 
correct "errors in the sense". If so, 
to attempt to make good the omission 
of rhymes and so on is simply to invade 
the poem with rash assistance, and 
forget the fate of Uzza. The very im- 
perfections have a value ; and the 
great beauty of passages in every page 
becomes the more wonderful. 



6 ADVERTISEMENT. 

impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only 
pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and 
expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired 
it. 

I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left 
in England will be selected by my bookseller, to add to 
this collection. One, which I sent from Italy, was written 
after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which 
surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the 
sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn 
the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth 
the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the 
radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian 
sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those delightful 
mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were 
not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom 
added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of 
its value, and who would have had more right than any 
one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish 
in me the very power of delineating sadness. 



Naples, Dec. 20, 1818. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Eosalind and Helen - 11 

Lines written on the Enganean Hills - 54 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 67 

Sonnet ----- - 72 



ROSALIND AND HELEN 



MODERN ECLOGUE. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 



Rosalind, Helen and her Child. 
Scene, the Shore of the Lake of Como. 

HELEN. 

Come hither, my sweet Kosalind. 

'Tis long since thou and I have met ; 

And yet methinks it were unkind 

Those moments to forget. 

Come sit by me. I see thee stand 5 

By this lone lake, in this far land, 

Thy loose hair in the light wind flying, 

Thy sweet voice to each tone of even 

United, and thine eyes replying 

To the hues of yon fair heaven. * 10 

Come, gentle friend : wilt sit by me ? 

And be as thou wert wont to be 

Ere we were disunited ? 

None doth behold us now : the power 

That led us forth at this lone hour 15 

"Will be but ill requited 

If thou depart in scorn : oh ! come, 

And talk of our abandoned home. 

Eemember, this is Italy, 

And we are exiles. Talk with me 20 

Of that our land, whose wilds and floods, 



12 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

Barren and dark although they be, 

Were dearer than these chesnut woods : 

Those heathy paths, that inland stream, 

And the blue mountains, shapes which seem 25 

Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream : 

Which that we have abandoned now, 

Weighs on the heart like that remorse 

Which altered friendship leaves. I seek 

No more our youthful intercourse. 30 

That cannot be ! Eosalind, speak, 

Speak to me. Leave me not. — When morn did come, 

When evening fell upon our common home, 

When for one hour we parted, — do not frown : 

I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken : 35 

But turn to me. Oh ! by this cherished token, 

Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown, 

Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me, 

And not my scorned self who prayed to thee. 

ROSALIND. 

Is it a dream, or do I see 40 

And hear frail Helen ? I would flee 

Thy tainting touch ; but former years 

Arise, and bring forbidden tears ; 

And my o'erburthened memory 

Seeks yet its lost repose in thee. 45 

I share thy crime. I cannot choose 

But weep for thee : mine own strange grief 

But seldom stoops to such relief: 

Nor ever did I love thee less, 

Though mourning o'er thy wickedness . 50 

Even with a sister's woe. I knew 

What to the evil world is due, 

And therefore sternly did refuse 

To link me with the infamy 



ROSALIND AXD HELEN. 13 

Of one so lost as Helen. Now 55 

Bewildered by my dire despair, 

Wondering I blush, and weep that thou 

Should'st love me still, — thou only ! — There, - 

Let us sit on that grey stone, 

Till our mournful talk be done. 60 

HELEN. 

Alas ! not there ; I cannot bear 

The murmur of this lake to hear. 

A sound from there, 1 Eosalincl dear, 

Which never yet I heard elsewhere 

JBut in our native land, recurs, 65 

Even here where now we meet. It stirs 

Too much of suffocating sorrow ! 

In the dell of yon dark chesnut wood 

Is a stone seat, a solitude 

Less like our own. The ghost of peace 70 

Will not desert this spot. To-morrow, 

If thy kind feelings should not cease, 

We may sit here. 



ROSALIND. 

Thou lead, my sweet, 



And I will follow. 



HENRY. 

'Tis Fenici's seat 
Where you are going ? This is not the way, 75 

Mamma ; it leads behind those trees that grow 
Close to the little river. 



1 Mr. Rossetti is doubtless right in sound so painful to Helen is of course 

thinking thee a misprint for there ; " the murmur of the lake," reminding 

and I adopt this fearlessly as one of her of the wash of the waves round 

the corrections Shelley would have the fane where Lionel had died : see 

made for a " second edition." The line 1049, p. 44. et seq. 



14 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

HELEN. 

Yes : I know : 
I was bewildered. Kiss me, and be gay, 
Dear boy : why do you sob ? 

HENRY. 

I do not know : 
But it might break any one's heart to see so 

You and the. lady cry so bitterly. 

HELEN. 

It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home, 
Henry, and play with Lilla till I come. 
We only cried with joy to see each other; 
We are quite merry now : Good night. 

The boy 85 

Lifted a sudden look upon his mother, 
And in the gleam of forced and hollow joy 
Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee 
Of light and unsuspecting infancy, 

And whispered in her ear, " Bring home with you 90 
That sweet strange lady-friend." Then off he flew, 
But stopt, and beckoned with a meaning smile, 
Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while, 
Hiding her face, stood weeping silently. 

In silence then they took the way 95 

-Beneath the forest's solitude. 
It was a vast and antique wood, 
Thro' which they took their way ; 
And the grey shades of evening 

O'er that green wilderness did fling 100 

Still deeper solitude. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 15 

Pursuing still the path that wound 

The vast and knotted trees around 

Thro' which slow shades were wandering, 

To a deep lawny dell they came, 105 

To a stone seat beside a spring, 

O'er which the columned wood did frame 

A roofless temple, like the fane 

Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain, 

Man's early race once knelt beneath 110 

The overhanging deity. 

O'er this fair fountain hung the sky, 

Now spangled with rare stars. The snake, 

The pale snake, that with eager breath 

Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake, 115 

Is beaming with many a mingled hue, 

Shed from yon dome's eternal blue, 

When he floats on that dark and lucid flood 

In the light of his own loveliness ; 

And the birds that in the fountain dip 120 

Their plumes, with fearless fellowship 

Above and round him wheel and hover. 

The fitful wind is heard to stir 

One solitary leaf on high ; 

The chirping of the grasshopper 125 

Fills every pause. There is emotion 

In all that dwells at noontide here : 

Then, thro' the intricate wild wood, 

A maze of life and light and motion 

Is woven. But there is stillness now : 130 

Gloom, and the trance of Nature now : 

The snake is in his cave asleep; 

The birds are on the branches dreaming: 

Only the shadows creep : 

Only the glow-worm is gleaming : 135 

Only the owls and the nightingales 



16 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

Wake in. this dell when day-light fails, 

And grey shades gather in the woods : 

And the owls have all fled far away 

In a merrier glen to hoot and play, uo 

For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. 

The accnstomed nightingale still broods 

On her accnstomed bongh, 

But she is mute; for her false mate 

Has fled and left her desolate. 145 

This silent spot tradition old 

Had peopled with the spectral dead. 

For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold 

And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told 

That a hellish shape at midnight led 150 

The ghost of a youth with hoary hair, 

And sate on the seat beside him there, 

Till a naked child came wandering by, 

When the fiend would change to a lady fair ! 

A fearful tale ! The truth was worse : 155 

For here a sister and a brother 

Had solemnized a monstrous curse, 

Meeting in this fair solitude : - - 

For beneath yon very sky, 

Had they resigned to one another ieo 

Body and soul. The multitude, 

Tracking them to the secret wood, 

Tore limb from limb their innocent child, 

And stabbed and trampled on it's mother; 

But the youth, for God's most holy grace, i65 

A priest saved to burn in the market-place. 

Duly at evening Helen came 

To this lone silent spot, 

From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 17 

So much of sympathy to borrow 170 

As soothed her own dark lot. 

Duly each evening from her home, 

With her fair child would Helen come 

To sit upon that antique seat, 

While the hues of day were pale ; 175 

And the bright boy beside her feet 

Now lay, lifting at intervals 

His broad blue eyes on her ; 

Now, where some sudden impulse calls 

Following. 1 He was a gentle boy iso 

And in all gentle sports took joy ; 

Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, 

With a small feather for a sail, 

His fancy on that spring would float, 

If some invisible breeze might stir isr> 

It's marble calm : and Helen smiled 

Thro' tears of awe on the gay child, 

To think that a boy as fair as he, 

In years which never more may be, 

By that same fount, in that same wood r 10a 

The like sweet fancies had pursued ; 

And that a mother, lost like her, 

Had mournfully sate watching him. 

Then all the scene was wont to swim 

Through the mist of a burning tear. 195 

For many months had Helen known 

This scene ; and now she thither turned 

Her footsteps, not alone. 

The friend whose falsehood she had mourned, 

Sate with her on that seat of stone. 200 

Silent they sate ; for evening, 

1 This word is printed followed by any profession of supposing that 
Mr. Rossetti, though he does not make Shelley wrote it so. 



18 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

And the power it's glimpses bring 

Had, with one awful shadow, quelled 

The passion of their grief. They sate 

With linked hands, for nnrepelled 205 

Had Helen taken Kosalind's. 

Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds 

The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair, 

Which is twined in the sultry summer air 

Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre, 210 

Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet, 

And the sound of her heart that ever beat, 

As with sighs and words she breathed on her, 

Unbind the knots of her friend's despair, 

Till her thoughts were free to float and flow ; 215 

And from her labouring bosom now, 

Like the bursting of a prisoned flame, 

The voice of a long pent sorrow came. 

ROSALIND. 

I saw the dark earth fall upon 

The coffin ; and I saw the stone 220 

Laid over him whom this cold breast 

Had pillowed to his nightly rest ! 

Thou knowest not, thou canst 1 not know 

My agony. Oh ! I could not weep : 

The sources whence such blessings flow 225 

Were not to be approached by me ! 

But I could smile, and I could sleep, 

Though with a self-accusing heart. 

In morning's light, in evening's gloom, 

I watched, — and would not thence depart — 2 230 

1 In Shelley's edition, can'st. says she went straight away on hear- 

2 The consistency of this with other ing the will (line 523 et seq., p. 28), — 
statements is not a matter of much an inaccuracy probably incidental to 
importance ; but Rosalind does not the interruption of the work. See 
keep her promise (line 248, p. 19) of note 1, p. 5. 

telling the truth ; for further on she 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 19 

My husband's unlamentecl tomb. 

My children knew their sire was gone, 

But when I told them, — ' he is dead,' — 

They laughed aloud in frantic glee, 

They clapped their hands and leaped about, 235 

Answering each other's ecstasy 1 

With many a prank and merry shout. 

But I sat 2 silent and alone, 

Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed. 

They laughed, for he was dead : but I 240 

Sate with a hard and tearless eye, 

And with a heart which would deny. 

The secret joy it could not quell, 

Low muttering o'er his loathed name ; 

Till from that self- contention came 245 

Bemorse where sin was none ; a hell 

Which in pure spirits should not dwell. 

I'll tell thee truth. He was a man 

Hard, selfish, loving only gold, 

Yet full of guile : his pale eyes ran 250 

With tears, which each some falsehood told, 

And oft his smooth and bridled tongue 

Would give the lie to his flushing cheek : 

He was a coward to the strong : 

He was a tyrant to the weak, 255 

On whom his vengeance he would wreak : 

For scorn, whose arrows search the heart, 

From many a stranger's eye would dart, 

And on his memory cling, and follow 

His soul to it's home so cold and hollow. 200 



1 In Shelley's edition, erstacy. the poem elsewhere, advisedly, it is 

2 So in all authoritative editions bootless to guess. It certainly sounds 
from Shelley's onwards ; but whether better in this particular place ; but I 
sat was used here, and sate throughout think it often would, where sate is used. 



B 



9 



20 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

He was a tyrant to the weak, 

And we were such, alas the day! 

Oft, when my little ones at play, 

Were in youth's natural lightness gay, 

Or if they listened to some tale 265 

Of travellers, or of fairy land, — 

When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand 

Flashed on their faces, — if they heard 

Or thought they heard upon the stair 

His footstep, the suspended word 270 

Died on my lips : we all grew pale : 

The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear 

If it thought it heard its father near ; 

And my two wild boys would near my knee 

Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully. 275 

I'll tell thee truth: I loved another. 

His name in my ear was ever ringing, 

His form to my brain was ever clinging : 

Yet if some stranger breathed that name, 

My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast : 280 

My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame, 

My days were dim in the shadow cast 1 

By the memory of the same ! 

Day and night, day and night, 

He was my breath and life and light, 235 

For three short years, which soon were past. 

On 2 the fourth, my gentle mother 

Led me to the shrine, to be 

His sworn bride eternally. 

1 In Shelley's and Mrs. Shelley's make use of an elliptical construction, 
editions, there is a comma at cast. — " On the dawn or coming of the 

2 Mr. Rossetti reads In, andsuggests fourth." In would be very vague ; and 
" printer's error" as the explanation of I do not see that it has any but a 
On. I think on is the preposition of pedagogic advantage over on, if even 
Shelley's choice, and that he meant to it has that. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 21 

And 1 now we stood on the altar stair, 200 

When my father came from a distant land, 

And with a loud and fearful cry 

Bushed between us suddenly. 

I saw the stream of his thin grey hair, 

I saw his lean and lifted hand, 295 

And heard his words, — and live ! Oh God ! 

Wherefore do I live ?— ' Hold, hold ! ' 

He cried, — ' I tell thee 'tis her brother ! 

Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod 

Of yon church-yard rests in her shroud so cold : 300 

I am now weak, and pale, and old: 

We were once dear to one another, 

I and that corpse ! Thou art our child ! ' 

Then with a laugh both long and wild 

The youth upon the pavement fell : 305 

They found him dead ! All looked on me, 

The spasms of my despair to see : 

But I was calm. I went away : 

I was clammy-cold like clay! 

I did not weep : I did not speak : 310 

But day by day, week after week, 

I walked about like a corpse alive ! 

Alas ! sweet friend, you must believe 

This heart is stone : it did not break. 

My father lived a little while, 315 

But all might see that he was dying, 

He smiled with such a woful smile ! 

When he was in the church-yard lying 

Among the worms, we grew quite poor, 

So that no one would give us bread : 320 

1 In Shelley's edition there are un- with them, — possibly the printer's in- 
meaning inverted commas before this terpretation of some mark meant to 
word, and none elsewhere to correspond indicate a new paragraph. 



22 KOSALIND AND HELEN. 

My mother looked at me, and said 

Faint words of cheer, which only meant 

That she could die and be content; 

So' I went forth from the same church door 

To another husband's bed. 325 

And this was he who died at last, 

When weeks and months and years had past, 

Through which I firmly did fulfil 

My duties, a devoted wife, 

With the stern step of vanquished will, 330 

Walking beneath the night of life, 

Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain 

Falling for ever, pain by pain, 

The very hope of death's dear rest ; 

Which, since the heart within my breast 335 

Of natural life was dispossest, 

It's strange sustainer there had been. 

When flowers were dead, and grass was green 

Upon my mother's grave, — that mother 

Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make 340 

My wan eyes glitter for her sake, 

Was my vowed task, the single care 

Which once gave life to my despair, — 

When she was a thing that did not stir 

And the crawling worms were cradling her 345 

To a sleep more deep and so more sweet 

Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee, 

I lived : a living pulse then beat 

Beneath my heart that awakened me. 

What was this pulse so warm and free ? 350 

Alas ! I knew it could not be 

My own dull blood : 'twas like a thought 

Of liquid love, that spread and wrought 

Under my bosom and in my brain, 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 23 

And crept with the blood through every vein ; 355 

And hour by hour, day after day, 

The wonder could not charm away, 

But laid in sleep, my wakeful pain, 

Until I knew it was a child, 

And then I wept. For long, long years 300 

These frozen eyes had shed no tears : 

But now — 'tw T as the season fair and mild 

When April has wept itself to May : 

I sate through the sweet sunny day 

By my window bowered round with leaves, 305 

And down my cheeks the quick tears ran 1 

Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves, 

When warm spring showers are passing o'er : 

Helen, none can ever tell 

The joy it was to weep once more ! 370 

1 wept to think how hard it were 
To kill my babe, and take from it 
The sense of light, and the warm air, 
And my own fond and tender care, 

And love and smiles ; ere I knew yet 375 

That these for it might, as for me, 

Be the masks of a grinning mockery. 

And haply, I would dream, 'twere sweet 

To feed it from my faded breast, 

Or mark my own heart's restless beat 380 

Bock it to its untroubled rest, 

And watch the growing soul beneath 

Dawn in faint smiles ; and hear its breath, 

Half interrupted by calm sighs, 

1 Mr. Rossetti prints fell for ran, secure. It should be noted that the 

so as to get a rhyme for tell. It is ensuing simile is somewhat loose, inas- 

certainly more correct to say tears run much as rain - drops from the eaves do 

down the cheeks than fall down the nut either fall doxcn anything or run 

cheeks ; and the alteration is very in- duim anything, but through the air. 



24 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

And search the depth of its fair eyes 385 

For long departed memories ! 

And so I lived till that sweet load 

Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed 

The stream of years, and on it bore 

Two shapes of gladness to my sight ; 390 

Two other babes, delightful more 

In my lost soul's abandoned night, 

Than their own country ships may be 

Sailing towards wrecked mariners, 

Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea. 395 

For each, as it came, brought soothing tears, 

And a loosening warmth, as each one lay 

Sucking the sullen milk away 

About my frozen heart, did play, 

And weaned it, oh how painfully ! — 400 

As they themselves were weaned each one 

From that sweet food, — even from the thirst 

Of death, and nothingness, and rest, 

Strange inmate of a living breast ! 

Which all that I had undergone 1 405 

Of grief and shame, since she, who first 

The gates of that dark refuge closed, 

Came to my sight, and almost burst 

The seal of that Lethean spring ; 

But these fair shadows interposed : 410 



1 There is probably either corrup- is where the sense is incomplete) the 

tion in the line " which all that I had thirst of death, to slake which " these 

undergone," or a hiatus after " The fair shadows " (the remembered other 

seal of that Lethean spring." If the children) interposed. It is cmceiv- 

latter, then the incompleted sense is able, however, that there is neither 

that each child, as it came, weaned corruption nor hiatus, but just that 

Rosalind from the thirst of death, — simple measure of laxity which Shelley 

that the first child not only closed the allowed himself in this, perhaps the 

gate through which the mother looked laxest of his mature poems in regard 

towards "that dark refuge," but also to diction and metre. If that be so, 

almost burst the seal of the fountain of then he uses the word interposed in a 

forgetfulness, — that then came fresh strained and transitive sense ; and the 

grief and shame, reimposing (but this meaning would be " all that I had 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 25 

For all delights are shadows now ! 
And from my brain to my dull brow 
The heavy tears gather and flow : 
I cannot speak : Oh let me weep ! 

The tears which fell from her wan eyes 415 

Glimmered among the moonlight dew : 

Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs 

Their echoes in the darkness threw. 

When she grew calm, she thus did keep 

The tenor of her tale : 

He died: 420 

I know not how : he was not old, 
If age be numbered by its years : 
But he was bowed and bent with fears, 
Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold, 
Which, like fierce fever, left him weak; 425 

And his strait lip and bloated cheek 
Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers ; 
And selfish cares with barren plough, 
Not age, had lined his narrow brow, 
And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed 430 

Upon the withering life within, 
Like vipers on some poisonous weed. 
Whether his ill were death or sin 
None knew, until he died indeed, 

undergone since the birth of my first which for while, and and for had ; 

child only admitted an interchange of and, assuming those in this case, we 

places between the thirst of death and get clear sense enough : 

these fair shadows,"— but being then WhUe all that I had undergone 

used in the sense of only, alone. It Of grief and shame, since she, who first 

is, however, likely enough that this is T he ga J tes of ^S d ? l± , r ? fuge ^ losed ' . 

- , , ^ • ° i - 1 Came to my signt, ho.d almost burst, &c. 

one of the passages m which we are J ° 

to look for those "errors in the sense" Each new child, that is to say, weaned 

referred to in the letter to Mr. Oilier her from the thirst of death, while 

(see page 2). If it be so, I should her sufferings, since the birth of the 

suspect the word which in line 405, first, had almost burst the seal which 

and the word and in line 408 : among that first had put upon the " Lethean 

the commonest printer's errors are spring " of death. 



26 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

And then men owned they were the same. 435 

Seven days within my chamber lay 

That corse, and my babes made holiday : 

At last, I told them what is death: 

The eldest, with a kind of shame, 

Came to my knees with silent breath, 440 

And sate awe-stricken 1 at my feet; 

And soon the others left their play, 

And sate there too. It is unmeet 

To shed on the brief flower of youth 

The withering knowledge of the grave ; 445 

From me remorse then wrung that truth. 

I could not bear the joy which gave 

Too just a response to mine own. 

In vain. I dared not feign a groan • 

And in their artless looks I saw, 450 

Between the mists of fear and awe, 

That my own thought was theirs ; and they 

Expressed it not in words, but said, 

Each in its heart, how every day 

Will pass in happy work and play, 455 

Now he is dead and gone away. 

After the funeral all our kin 

Assembled, and the will was read. 

My friend, I tell thee, even the dead 

Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, 4go 

To blast and torture. Those who live 

Still fear the living, but a corse 

Is merciless, and Power 2 doth give 

To such pale tyrants half the spoil 

He rends from those who groan and toil, 4C5 

Because they blush not with remorse 

1 Mis-spelt awe-striken in the original 2 Power is spelt with a small/* in 

edition. Shelley's edition. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 27 

Among their crawling worms. Behold, 

I have no child! my tale grows old 

"With grief, and staggers : let it reach 

The limits of my feeble speech, 470 

And languidly at length recline 

On the brink of its own grave and mine. 

Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty 

Among the fallen on evil days : 

'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy, 475 

And houseless Want in frozen ways 

W r andering ungarrnented, and Pain, 

And, worse than all, that inward stain 

Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers 

Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears 4so 

First like hot gall, then dry for ever ! 

And well thou knowest a mother never 

Could doom her children to this ill, 

And well he knew the same. The will 

Imported, that if e'er again 480 

I sought my children to behold, 

Or in my birth-place did remain 

Beyond three days, whose hours were told, 

They should inherit nought : and he, 

To whom next came their patrimony, 490 

A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold, 

Aye watched me, as the will was read, 

W r ith eyes askance, which sought to see 

The secrets of my agony ; 

And with close lips and anxious brow 495 

Stood canvassing still to and fro 

The chance of my resolve, and all 

The dead man's caution just did call ; 

For in that killing lie 'twas said — 

" She is adulterous, and doth hold 500 



28 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

In secret that the Christian creed 

Is false, and therefore is much need 

That I should have a care to save 

My children from eternal fire." 

Friend, he was sheltered by the grave, 505 

And therefore dared to be a liar! 

In truth, the Indian on the pyre 

Of her dead husband, half consumed, 

As well might there be false, as I 

To those abhorred embraces doomed, 510 

Far worse than fire's brief agony. 

As to the Christian creed, if true 

Or false, I never questioned it : 

I took it as the vulgar do : 

ISTor my vext soul had leisure yet 515 

To doubt the things men say, or deem 

That they are other than they seem. 

All present who those crimes did hear, 

In feigned or actual scorn and fear, 

Men, women, children, slunk away, 520 

Whispering with self-contented pride, 

Which half suspects its own base lie. 

I spoke to none, nor did abide, 

But silently I went my way, 

Nor noticed I where joyously 525 

Sate my two younger babes at play, 

In the court-yard through which I past ; 

But went with footsteps firm and fast 

Till I came to the brink of the ocean green, 

And there, a woman with grey hairs, 530 

Who had my mother's servant been, 

Kneeling, with many tears and prayers, 

Made me accept a purse of gold, 

Half of the earnings she had kept 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 29 

To refuge her when weak and old. .535 

With woe, which never sleeps or slept, 

I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought — 

But on yon alp, whose snowy head 

'Mid the azure air is islanded, 

(We see it o'er the flood of cloud, 540 

Which sunrise from its eastern caves 

Drives, wrinkling into golden waves, 

Hung with its precipices proud, 

From that grey stone where first we met) 

There, now who knows the dead feel nought ? x 545 

Should be my grave ; for he who yet 

Is my soul's soul, once said : " 'Twere sweet 

'Mid stars and lightnings to abide, 

And winds and lulling snows, that beat 

With their soft flakes the mountain wide, 550 

When weary meteor lamps repose, 

And languid storms their pinions close : 

And all things strong and bright and pure, 

And ever during, aye endure : 

Who knows, if one were buried there, 555 

But these things* might our spirits make, 

Amid the all-surrounding air, 

Their own eternity partake ?" 

Then 'twas a wild and playful saying 

At which I laughed, or seemed to laugh : 560 

They were his words: now heed my praying, 

And let them be my epitaph. 

Thy memory for a term may be 

My monument. Wilt remember me ? 

I know thou wilt, and canst forgive 565 

Whilst in this erring world to live 

My soul disdained not, that I thought 

1 This question is of course paren- [that is to say, "on yon alp "] should 
thetic, the main position being "There be my grave." 



30 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

Its lying forms were worthy aught 
And much less thee. 

HELEN. 

speak not so, 
But come to me and pour thy woe ' 570 

Into this heart, full though it be, 
Aye overflowing with its own : 
I thought that grief had severed me 
From all beside who weep and groan ; 
Its likeness upon earth to be, 575 

Its express image ; but thou art 
More wretched. Sweet ! we will not part 
Henceforth, if death be not division ; 
If so, the dead feel no contrition. 

But wilt thou hear, since last we parted 580 

All that has left me broken hearted ? 

ROSALIND. 

Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn 

Of their thin beams by that delusive morn 

Which sinks again in darkness, like the light 

Of early love, soon lost in total night. 585 

HELEN. 

Alas ! Italian winds are mild, 

But my bosom is cold — wintry cold — 

When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves, 

Soft music, my poor brain is wild, 

And I am weak like a nursling child, 590 

Though my soul with grief is grey 1 and old. 

ROSALIND. 

Weep not at thine own words, though they must make 
Me weep. What is thy tale ? 

1 In Shelley's edition gray in this instance, though elsewhere grey. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 31 

HELEN. 

I fear 'twill shake 
Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well 
Eememberest when we met no more, 595 

And, though I dwelt with Lionel, 
That friendless caution pierced me sore 
With grief; a wound my spirit bore 
Indignantly, but when he died 
With him lay dead both hope and pride. 600 

Alas ! all hope is buried now. 

But then men dreamed the aged earth 

Was labouring in that mighty birth, 

Which many a poet and a sage 

Has aye foreseen — the happy age cos 

When truth and love shall dwell below 

Among the works and ways of men ; 

Which on. this world not power but will 

Even now is wanting to fulfil. 

Among mankind what thence befell 1 gio 

Of strife, how vain, is known too well ; 

When liberty's dear paean fell 

'Mid murderous howls. To Lionel, 

Though of great wealth and lineage high, 

Yet through those dungeon walls there came 615 

Thy thrilling light, liberty ! 

And as the meteor's midnight flame 

Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth 

Flashed on his visionary youth, 

And filled him, not with love, but faith, 020 

And hope, and courage mute in death ; 

For love and life in him were twins, 

Born at one birth : in every other 

First life then love its course begins, 

1 In Shelley's edition, befel, as at p. 35. 



32 KOSALIND AND HELEN. 

Though they be children of one mother ; 625 

And so through this dark world they fleet 

Divided, till in death they meet : 

But he loved all things ever. Then 

He past amid the strife of men, 

And stood at the throne of armed power 630 

Pleading for a world of woe : 

Secure as one on a rock-built tower 

O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, 

'Mid the passions wild of human kind 

He stood, like a spirit calming them ; 635 

For, it was said, his words could bind 

Like music the lulled crowd, and stem- 

That torrent of unquiet dream, 

Which mortals truth and reason deem, 

But is revenge and fear and pride. 640 

Joyous he was ; and hope and peace 

On all who heard him did abide, 

Eaining like dew from his sweet talk, 

As where the evening star may walk 

Along the brink of the gloomy seas, 645 

Liquid mists of splendour quiver. 

His very gestures touched to tears 

The unpersuaded tyrant, never 

So moved before : his presence stung 

The torturers with their victim's pain, 1 cso 

And none knew how ; and through their ears, 

The subtle witchcraft of his tongue 

Unlocked the hearts of those who keep 

Gold, the world's bond of slavery. 



1 It has been suggested, in order to it is quite open to question whether 

get a kind of rhyme where none exists, Shelley would have preferred inversion 

that this line should be printed and a bad rhyme to directness and no 

With their victims' pain the torturers. rhyme, if he had had to make delibe- 

It would be very hazardous to print it rate choice, in this or any other par- 

so without manuscript authority ; and ticular case. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 33 

Men wondered, and some sneered to see 055 

One sow what he could never reap : 

For he is rich, they said, and young, 

And might drink from the depths of luxury. 

If lie seeks fame, fame never crowned 

The champion of a trampled creed : 6co 

If he seeks power, power is enthroned 

'Mid antient rights and wrongs, to feed 

Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil, 

Those who would sit near power must toil ; 

And such, there sitting, all may see. 665 

What seeks he ? All that others seek 

He casts away, like a vile weed 

Which the sea casts unreturningly. 

That poor and hungry men should break 

The laws which wreak them toil and scorn, cro 

We understand ; but Lionel 

We know is rich and nobly born. 

So wondered they : yet all men loved 

Young Lionel, though few approved ; 

All but the priests, whose hatred fell 675 

Like the unseen blight of a smiling day, 

The withering honey dew, which clings 

Under the bright green buds of May, 

Whilst they unfold their emerald wings : 

For he made verses wild and queer eso 

On the strange creeds priests hold so dear, 

Because they bring them land and gold. 

Of devils and saints and all such gear, 

He made tales which whoso heard or read 

Would laugh till he were almost dead. 685 

So this grew a proverb : " don't get old 

Till Lionel's 'banquet in hell' you hear, 

And then you will laugh yourself young again." 

So the priests hated him, and he 



34 EOSALIND AND HELEN. 

Kepaid their hate with cheerful glee. 690 

Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died, 

For public hope grew pale and dim 

In an altered time and tide, 

And in its wasting withered him, 

As a summer flower that blows too soon 695 

Droops in the smile of the waning moon, 

When it scatters through an April night 

The frozen dews of wrinkling blight. 

None now hoped more. Grey Power was seated 

Safely on her ancestral throne ; 700 

And Faith, the Python, undefeated, 

Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on 

Her foul and wounded train, and men 

Were trampled and deceived again, 

And words and shews again could bind 705 

The wailing tribes of human kind 

In scorn and famine. Eire and blood 

Paged round the raging multitude, 

To fields remote by tyrants sent 

To be the scorned instrument 710 

With which they drag from mines of gore 

The chains their slaves yet ever wore : 

And in the streets men met each other, 

And by old, altars and in halls, 

And smiled again at festivals. 715 

But each man found in his heart's brother 

Cold cheer ; for all, though half deceived, 

The outworn creeds again believed, 

And the same round anew began, 

Which the weary world yet ever ran. 720 

Many then wept, not tears, but gall 
Within their hearts, like drops which fall 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 35 

Wasting the fountain-stone away. 

And in that dark and evil day 

Did all desires and thoughts, that claim 725 

Men's care — ambition, friendship, fame, 

Love, hope, though hope was now despair — 

Indue the colours of this change, 

As from the all-surrounding air 

The earth takes hues obscure and strange, 730 

When storm and earthquake linger there. 

And so, my friend, it then befell 1 

To many, most to Lionel, 

Whose hope was like the life of youth 

Within him, and when dead, became 735 

A spirit of unresting flame, 

Which goaded him in his distress 

Over the world's vast wilderness. 

Three years he left his native land, 

And on 2 the fourth, when he returned, 740 

None knew him : he was stricken 3 deep 

With some disease of mind, and turned 

Into aught unlike Lionel. 

On him, on whom, did he pause in sleep, 

Serenest smiles were wont to keep, 745 

And, did he wake, a winged band 

Of bright persuasions, which had fed 

On his sweet lips and liquid eyes, 

Kept their swift pinions half outspread, 

To do on men his least command ; 750 



1 In Shelley's edition we have again " On the fourth, when he returned," 
befel instead of befell, as at p. 31. I take to be elliptical for " On his 

2 The whole construction of this return at the dawn or beginning of the 
sentence, from Three years, is very fourth." Mr. Rossetti substitutes in 
loose; but I do not think there is any for on. See note 2, p. 20. 
corruption. It is of course meant, 3 In Shelley's edition, striken, as at 
not that he went away three times in p. 26. 

as many years, but for three years. 

C 2 



► 6 ROSALIND AND HELEN". 

On him, whom once 'twas paradise 

Even to behold, now misery lay i 1 

In his own heart 'twas merciless, 

To all things else none may express 

Its innocence and tenderness. 755 

'Twas said that he had refuge sought 

In love from his unquiet thought 

In distant lands, and been deceived 

By some strange shew ; for there were found, 

Blotted with tears as those relieved 760 

By their own words are wont to do, 

These mournful verses on the ground, 

By all who read them blotted too. 

" How am I changed ! my hopes were once like fire : 

I loved, and I believed that life was love. 765 

How am I lost ! on wings of swift desire 

Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move. 

I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire 

My liquid sleep : I woke, and did approve 

All nature to my heart, and thought to make 770 

A paradise of earth for one sweet sake. 

" I love, but I believe in love no more. 

I feel desire, but hope not. 0, from sleep 

Most vainly must my weary brain implore 

Its long lost flattery now : I wake to weep, 775 

And sit through the long day gnawing the core 

Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep, 

Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure, 

To my own soul its self-consuming treasure." 

He dwelt beside me near the sea : 7so 

And oft in evening did we meet, 

1 Mr. Rossetti suggests the substitution of weighed for lay. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 37 

When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee 

O'er the yellow sands with silver feet, 

And talked: our talk was sad and sweet, 

Till slowly from his mien there passed 785 

The desolation which it spoke ; 

And smiles, — as when the lightning's blast 

Has parched some heaven-delighting oak, 

The next spring shews leaves pale and rare, 

But like flowers delicate and fair, too 

On its rent boughs, — again arrayed 

His countenance in tender light : 

His words grew subtile fire, which made 

The air his hearers breathed delight : 

His motions, like the winds, were free, 705 

Which bend the bright grass gracefully, 

Then fade away in circlets faint : 

And winged hope, on which upborne 

His soul seemed hovering in his eyes, 

Like some bright spirit newly born soo 

Floating amid the sunny skies, 

Sprang forth from his rent heart anew. 

Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien, 

Tempering their loveliness too keen, 

Past woe its shadow backward threw, 805 

Till like an exhalation, spread 

From flowers half drunk with evening dew, 

They did become infectious : sweet 

And subtile mists of sense and thought : 

Which wrapt us soon, when we might meet, 810 

Almost from our own looks and aught 

The wide world holds, And so, his mind 

Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear : 

For ever now his health declined, 

Like some frail bark which cannot bear 815 

The impulse of an altered wind, 



\. 



\ 



38 KOSALIND AND HELEN. 

Though prosperous : and my heart grew full 

'Mid its new joy of a new care : 

For his cheek became, not pale, but fair, 

As rose-o'ershadowed lillies are ; 820 

And soon his deep and sunny hair, 

In this alone less beautiful, 

Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare. 

The blood in his translucent veins 

Beat, not like animal life, but love 825 

Seemed now its sullen springs to move, 

When life had failed, and all its pains : 

And sudden sleep would seize him oft 

Like death, so calm, but that a tear, 

His pointed eye-lashes between, 830 

Would gather in the light serene 

Of smiles, whose lustre bright and soft 

Beneath lay undulating there. 

His breath was like inconstant flame, 

As eagerly it went and came; S35 

And I hung o'er him in his sleep, 

Till, like an image in the lake 

Which rains disturb, my tears would break 

The shadow of that slumber deep : 

Then he would bid me not to weep, S40 

And say with flattery false, yet sweet, 

That death and he could never meet, 

If I would never part with him. 

And so we loved, and did unite 

All that in us was yet divided : 845 

For when he said, that many a rite, 

By men to bind but once provided, 

Could not be shared by him and me, 

Or they would kill him in their glee, 

I shuddered, and then laughing said — sso 

" We will have rites our faith to bind, 






ROSALIND AND HELEN. 39 

But our church shall be the starry night, 
Our altar the grassy earth outspread, 
And our priest the muttering wind." 

'Twas sunset as I spoke : one star 855 

Had scarce burst forth, when from afar 

The ministers of misrule sent, 

Seized upon Lionel, and bore 

His chained limbs to a dreary tower, 

In the midst of a city vast and wide. sgo 

For he, they said, from his mind had bent 

Against their gods keen blasphemy, 

For which, though his soul must roasted be 

In hell's red lakes immortally, 

Yet even on earth must he abide sgs 

The vengeance of their slaves : a trial, 

I think, men call it. What avail 

Are prayers and tears, which chase denial 

From the fierce savage, nursed in hate ? 

What the knit soul that pleading and pale sro 

Makes wan the quivering cheek, which late 

It painted with its own delight ? 

We were divided. As I could, 

I stilled the tingling of my blood, 

And followed him in their despite, 875 

As a widow follows, pale and wild, 

The murderers and corse of her only child ; 

And when we came to the prison door 

And I prayed to share his dungeon floor 

With prayers which rarely have been spurned, sso 

And when men drove me forth and I 

Stared with blank frenzy on the sky, 

A farewell look of love he turned, 

Half calming me ; then gazed awhile, 

As if thro' that black and massy pile, wtg | 



/ 

k 



40 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

And thro' the crowd around him there, 

And thro' the dense and murky air, 

And the thronged streets, he did espy 

What poets know and prophesy j 1 

And said, with voice that made them shiver soo 

And clung like music in my brain, 

And which the mute walls spoke again 

Prolonging it with deepened strain : 

"Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever, 

Or the priests of the bloody faith ; s95 

They stand on the brink of that mighty river, 

Whose waves they have tainted with death : 

It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells, 

Around them it foams, and rages, and swells, 

And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, 900 

Like wrecks in the surge of eternity." 2 . 

I dwelt beside the prison gate, 

And the strange crowd that out and in 

Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate, 

Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din, 905 

But the fever of care was louder within. 

Soon, but too late, in penitence 

Or fear, his foes released him thence : 

I saw his thin and languid form, 

As leaning on the jailor's arm, 910 

Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while, 

To meet his mute and faded smile, 

And hear his words of kind farewell, 

He tottered forth from his damp cell. 

1 In Shelley's edition 'prophecy. line 894, evil for bloody in line 895, 

2 This stanza occurs with some slight raging for mighty in line 896, depth 
variations in the poem to William for depths in line 898 ; and line 899 
Shelley, written when Shelley feared has no commas in it in that version, 
the Lord Chancellor might seek to In Shelley's edition there is a comma 
deprive him of that child also, after after Fear not, which Mrs. Shelley 
having taken away Charles and Ianthe. rightly omits both from Rosalind and 
The variations are will for shall in Helen and from the poem to William. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 41 

Many had never wept before, 915 

From whoro. fast tears then gushed and fell : 

Many will relent no more, 

Who sobbed like infants then : aye, all 

Who thronged the prison's stony hall, 

The rulers or the slaves of law, 920 

Felt with a new surprise and awe 

That they were human, till strong shame 

Made them again become the same. 

The prison blood-hounds, huge and grim, 

From human looks the infection caught, 925 

And fondly crouched and fawned on him ; 

And men have heard the prisoners say, 

Who in their rotting dungeons lay, 

That from that hour, throughout one day, 

The fierce despair and hate which kept 930 

Their trampled bosoms almost slept, 1 

When, like twin vultures, they hung feeding 

On each heart's wound, wide torn and bleeding, 

Because their jailors' rule, they thought, 

Grew merciful, like a parent's sway. 935 

I know not how, but we were free : 

And Lionel sate alone with me, 

As the carriage drove thro' the streets apace ; 

And we looked upon each other's face ; 

And the blood in our fingers intertwined 940 

Ban like the thoughts of a single mind, 

As the swift emotions went and came 

Thro' the veins of each united frame. 

So thro' the long long streets we past 

Of the million-peopled City vast ; 945 

Which is that desart, where each one 

1 There is a colon at slept in Shelley's doubt whether we should not read 
edition, which is clearly wrong ; and I Where for When in line 932. 



42 KOSALIND AND HELEN. 

Seeks his mate yet is alone, 

Beloved and sought and mourned of none ; 

Until the clear blue sky was seen, 

And the grassy meadows bright and green, 950 

And then I sunk in his embrace, 

Enclosing there a mighty space 

Of love : and so we travelled on 

By woods, and fields of yellow flowers, 

And towns, and villages, and towers, 955 

Day after day of happy hours. 

It was the azure time of June, 

When the skies are deep in the stainless noon, 

And the warm and fitful breezes shake 

The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row briar, 9eo 

And there were odours then to make 

The very breath we did respire 

A liquid element, whereon 

Our spirits, like delighted things 

That walk the air on subtle wings, 965 

Moated and mingled far away, 

'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day. 

And when the evening star came forth 

Above the curve of the new bent moon, 

And light and sound ebbed from the earth, 970 

Like the tide of the full and weary sea 

To the depths of its tranquillity, 

Our natures to its own repose 

Did the earth's breathless sleep attune : 

Like flowers, which on each other close 975 

Their languid leaves when day-light's gone, 

We lay, till new emotions came, 

Which seemed to make each mortal frame 

One soul of interwoven flame, 

A life in life, a second birth 9so 

In worlds diviner far than earth, 

Which, like two strains of harmony 



\ . 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 43 

That mingle in the silent sky 

Then slowly disunite, past by 

And left the tenderness of tears, 985 

A soft oblivion of all fears, 

A sweet sleep : so w T e travelled on 

Till we came to the home of Lionel, 

Among the mountains wild and lone, 

Beside the hoary western sea, 990 

Which near the verge of the echoing shore 

The massy forest shadowed o'er. 

The ancient steward, with hair all hoar, 

As we alighted, wept to see 

His master changed so fearfully ; 995 

And the old man's sobs did waken me 

From my dream of unremaining gladness ; 

The truth flashed o'er me like quick madness 

When I looked, and saw that there was death 

On Lionel : yet clay by day 1000 

He lived, till fear grew hope and faith, 

And in my soul I dared to say, 

Nothing so bright can pass away : 

Death is dark, and foul, and dull, 

But he is — how beautiful ! 1005 

Yet day by day he grew more weak, 

And his sweet voice, when he might speak, 

Which ne'er was loud, became more low ; 

And the light which flashed through his waxen cheek 

Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow 1010 

From sunset o'er the Alpine snow : 

And death seemed not like death in him, 

For the spirit of life o'er every limb 

Lingered, a mist of sense and thought. 

When the summer wind faint odours brought 1015 

From mountain flowers, even as it passed 



^ 



44 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

His cheek would change, as the noon-day sea 
Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully. 
If but a cloud the sky o'ercast, 

You might see his colour come and go, 1020 

And the softest strain of music made 
Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and facie 
Amid the dew of his tender eyes ; 
And the breath, with intermitting flow, 
Made his pale lips quiver and part. 1025 

You might hear the beatings of his heart, 
Quick, but not strong; and with my tresses 
When oft he playfully would bind 
In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses 
His neck, and win me so to mingle 1030 

In the sweet depth of woven caresses, 
And our faint limbs were intertwined, 
Alas ! the unquiet life did tingle 
From mine own heart through every vein, 
Like a captive in dreams of liberty, 1035 

Who beats the walls of his stony cell. 
But his, it seemed already free, 
Like the shadow of fire surrounding me ! 
- On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell 
That spirit as it passed, till soon, i<mo 

As a frail cloud wandering o'er the moon, 
Beneath its light invisible, 
Is seen when it folds its grey wings again 
To alight on midnight's dusky plain, 
I lived and saw, and the gathering soul 1045 

Passed from beneath that strong controul, 
And I fell on a life which was sick with fear 
Of all the woe that now I bear. 

Amid a bloomless myrtle wood, 

On a green and sea-girt promontory, 1050 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 45 

Not far from where we dwelt, there stood 

In record of a sweet sad story, 

An altar and a temple bright 

Circled by steps, and o'er the gate 

Was sculptured, " To Fidelity ;" 1055 

And in the shrine an image sate, 

All veiled: but there was seen the light 

Of smiles, which faintly could express 

A mingled pain and tenderness 

Through that ethereal drapery. iogo 

The left hand held the head, the right — 

Beyond the veil, beneath the skin, 

You might see the nerves quivering within — 

Was forcing the point of a barbed dart 

Into its side-convulsing heart. 1065 

An unskilled hand, yet one informed 

With genius, had the marble warmed 

With that pathetic life. This tale 

It told : A dog had from the sea, 

When the tide was raging fearfully, 1070 

Dragged Lionel's mother, weak and pale, 

Then died beside her on the sand, 

And she that temple thence had planned ; 

But it was Lionel's own hand 

Had wrought the image. Each new moon 1075 

That lady did, in this lone fane, 

The rites of a religion sweet, 

Whose god was in her heart and brain : 

The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn 

On the marble floor beneath her feet, ioso 

And she brought crowns of sea-buds white, 

Whose odour is so sweet and faint, 

And weeds, like branching chrysolite, 1 

Woven in devices fine and quaint, 

1 Tn Shelley's edition, chrysohjtc. 



46 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

And tears from her brown eyes did stain loss 

The altar : need but look upon 

That dying statue, fair and wan, 

If tears should cease, to weep again : 

And rare Arabian odours came, 

Though the myrtle copses steaming thence 1090 

From the hissing frankincense, 

"Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam, 

Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome, 

That ivory dome, whose azure night 

With golden stars, like heaven, was bright 1095 

O'er the split cedar's 1 pointed flame ; 

And the lady's harp would kindle there 

The melody of an old air, 

Softer than sleep ; the villagers 

Mixt their religion up with her's, 1100 

And as they listened round, shed tears. 

One eve he led me to this fane : 

Daylight on its last purple cloud 

Was lingering grey, and soon her strain 

The nightingale began ; now loud, 1105 

Climbing in circles the windless sky, 

Now dying music; suddenly 

'Tis scattered in a thousand notes, 

And now to the hushed ear it floats 

Like field smells known in infancy, 1110 

Then failing, soothes the air again. 

We sate within that temple lone, 

Pavilioned round with Parian stone : 

His mother's harp stood near, and oft 

I had awakened music soft 1115 

Amid its wires : the nightingale 

Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale : 

1 In Shelley's edition, cedars. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 47 

" Now drain the cup," said Lionel, 

" Which the poet-bird has crowned so well 

With the wine of her bright and liquid song! 1120 

Heardst thou not sweet words among 

That heaven-resounding minstrelsy ? 

Heardst thou not, that those who die 

Awake in a world of ecstasy ? 1 

That love, when limbs are interwoven, 1125 

And sleep, when the night of life is cloven, 

And thought, to the world's dim boundaries clinging, 

And music, when one beloved is singing, 

Is death ? Let us drain right joyously 

The cup which the sweet bird fills for me." 1130 

He paused, and to my lips he bent 

His own : like spirit his words went 

Through all my limbs with the speed of fire ; 

And his keen eyes, glittering through mine, 

Filled me with the flame divine, 1135 

Which in their orbs was burning far, 

Like the light of an unmeasured star, 

In the sky of midnight dark and deep : 

Yes, 'twas his soul that did inspire 

Sounds, which my skill could ne'er awaken; iuo 

And first, I felt my fingers sweep 

The harp, and a long quivering cry 

Burst from my lips in symphony: 

The dusk and solid air was shaken, 

As swift and swifter the notes came 1145 

From my touch, that wandered like quick flame, 

And from my bosom, labouring 

With some unutterable thing: 

The awful sound of my own voice made 

My faint lips tremble, in some mood 1150 

Of wordless thought Lionel stood 

1 Spelt extacy in Shelley's edition. 



48 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

So pale, tliat even beside his cheek 

The snowy column from its shade 

Caught whiteness : yet his countenance 

Eaised upward, burned with radiance 1155 

Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light, 

Like the moon struggling through the night 

Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break 

With beams that might not be confined. 

I paused, but soon his gestures kindled neo 

New power, as by the moving wind 

The waves are lifted, and my song 

To low soft notes now changed and dwindled, 

And from the twinkling wires among, 

My languid fingers drew and flung nes 

Circles of life-dissolving 1 sound, 

Yet faint : in aery rings they bound 

My Lionel, who, 2 as every strain 

Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien 

Sunk with the sound relaxedly ; 1170 

And slowly now he turned to me, 

As slowly faded from his face 

That awful joy : with look serene 

He was soon drawn to my embrace, 

And my wild song then died away 1175 

In murmurs : words I dare not say, 3 

We mixed, and on his lips mine fed 

Till they methought felt still and cold : 

"What is it with thee, love?" I said: 



1 No hyphen in Shelley's edition. it is open to question whether mien 

2 Mr. Rossetti omits who, puts a full is nominative or accusative. Shelley 
point after Lionel, commences a fresh may have meant to express that Lionel 
sentence with As, and accuses Shelley "sunk his mien," though it is more 
of using bad English, in terms which probable that the construction inten- 
I prefer not to quote. Mr. Swinburne ded is that " Lionel's mien sunk." 
rebuts the charge on the ground that 3 In the original the sense is sub- 
the construction, though licentious, is verted by the comma being at words 
used by elder classical writers. But instead of say. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 49 

No word, no look, no motion ! yes, llso 

There was a change, but spare to guess, 

Nor let that moment's hope be told. 

I looked, and knew that he was dead, 

And fell, as the eagle on the plain 

Falls when life deserts her brain, 1185 

And the mortal lightning is veiled again. 

O that I were now dead ! but such 

(Did they not, love, demand too much, 

Those dying murmurs ?) he forbade. 1 

O that I once again were mad ! 1190 

And yet, dear Eosalind, not so, 

For I would live to share thy woe. 

Sweet boy, did I forget thee too ? 

Alas, we know not what we do 

When we speak words. 

No memory more 1195 

Is in my mind of that sea shore. 
Madness came on me, and a troop 
Of misty shapes did seem to sit 
Beside me, on a vessel's poop, 

And the clear north wind was driving it. 1200 

Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers, 
And the stars methought grew unlike ours, 
And the azure sky and the stormless sea 
Made me believe that I had died, 

And waked in a world, which was to me 1205 

Drear hell, though heaven to all beside : 
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind, 



1 In these three lines I have adopted stand thus : — 

Mr. Rossetti's punctuation, which _ ., , T , , , , . 

n r O that I were now dead ! but such 

rescues from ruin a passage where p id they not, love, demand too much 

there is unmistakeable "error in the Those dying murmurs? He forbade, 
sense." In Shelley's edition the lines 



50 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

Whilst 1 animal life many long years 

Had rescued from a chasm of tears ; 

And when I woke, I wept to find 1210 

That the same lady, bright and wise, 

With silver locks and quick brown eyes, 

The mother of my Lionel, 

Had tended me in my distress, 

And died some months before. Nor less 1215 

Wonder, but far more peace and joy 

Brought in that hour my lovely boy ; 

For through that trance my soul had well 

The impress of thy being kept ; 

And if I waked, or if I slept, 1220 

No doubt, though memory faithless be, 

Thy image ever dwelt on me ; 

And thus, Lionel, like thee 

Is our sweet child. 'Tis sure most strange 

I knew not of so great a change, 1225 

As that which gave him birth, who now 

Is all the solace of my woe. 

That Lionel great wealth had left 

By will to me, and that of all 

The ready lies of law bereft 1230 

1 This is certainly another instance hallucination, and contemporary with 

of misprinting involving an " error in the " dead sleep ", — because if, ad- 

the sense"; but there are so many mitting had to be right, we make the 

possible ways of reconstructing the rescue from the "chasm of tears" 

two faulty lines on an equally Shelley- contemporary with the hallucination, 

like pattern, that I do not venture to we are met by the statement that the 

disturb the text at all. I have no imaginary land of Helen's madness 

doubt that Whilst in line 1208 and was "drear hell" to her, which is 

Had in line 1209 are both wrong, and very much like not being rescued 

that the sense intended by Shelley from a " chasm of tears." I find the 

would be conveyed by whole line, 

Then a dead sleep feU on my mind, WllUst animal me man y lon S years, 

£££££ ?S££tfSSr baffiin ^ unlike Shelle ^ > and * does 

not strike me as much more charac- 
the rescue of the "animal life " being teristic when we reduce it to sense by 
evidently subsequent to the time of substituting Which for Whilst. 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 51 

My child and me, might well befall. 1 

But let me think not of the scorn, 

Which from the meanest I have borne, 

When, for my child's beloved sake, 

I mixed with slaves, to vindicate 1235 

The very laws themselves do make : 

Let me not say scorn is my fate, 

Lest I be proud, suffering the same 

With those who live in deathless fame. 1239 

She ceased. — " Lo, where red morning thro' the woods 2 

Is burning o'er the dew ;" said Eosalind. 

And with these words they rose, and towards the flood 

Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now wind 

With equal steps and fingers intertwined : 

Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore 1245 

Is shadowed with steep 3 rocks, and cypresses 

Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies, 

And with their shadows the clear depths below, 

And where a little terrace from its bowers, 

Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers, 1250 

Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er 

The liquid marble of the windless lake ; 

And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar, 

Under the leaves which their green garments make, 

They come : 'tis Helen's home, and clean and white, 1255 

Like one which tyrants spare on our own land 

1 As this passage is punctuated in tive editions ; but Mr. Rossetti reads 
Shelley's and Mrs. Shelley's editions, wood for woods, which, I have little 
namely with the comma at bereft in- doubt, is a safe emendation. As how- 
stead of me, bereft is intransitive and ever the mere absence of a rhyme does 
befall transitive, so that the sense not condemn a passage according to 
would stand — " it might well befall the standard of this poem, and woods is 
my child and me that the ready lies intrinsically as good as wood, I leave 
of law bereft of all "; but the sense is it as I find it. 

doubtless — " it might well befall that 3 Mrs. Shelley omits steep, no doubt 

the ready lies of law bereft my child accidentally, though, by accenting the 

and me of all." ed of shadowed, the line still reads as 

2 So in Shelley's and all authorita- a full line, without the word steep. 

D 2 



52 ROSALIND AND HELEN. 

In some such solitude, its casements bright 

Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun, 

And even within 'twas scarce like Italy. 

And when she saw how all things there were planned, 1260 

As in an English home, dim memory 

Disturbed poor Eosalind : she stood as one . 

Whose mind is where his body cannot be, 

Till Helen led her where her child yet slept, 

And said, " Observe, that brow was Lionel's, 1265 

Those lips were his, and so he ever kept 

One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it. 

You cannot see his eyes, they are two wells 

Of liquid love : let us not wake him yet." 

But Eosalind could bear no more, and wept 12T0 

A shower of burning tears, which fell, upon 

His face, and so his opening lashes shone 

With tears unlike his own, as he did leap 

In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep. 

So Eosalind and Helen lived together 1275 

Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again, 

Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather 

They wandered in their youth, through sun and rain. 

And after many years, for human things 

Change even like the ocean and the wind, 128 ° 

Her daughter was restored to Eosalind, 

And in their circle thence some visitings 

Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene : 

A lovely child she was, of looks serene, 

And motions which o'er things indifferent shed 1285 

The grace and gentleness from whence they came. 

And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed 

From the same flowers of thought, until each mind 

Like springs which mingle in one flood became, 

And in their union soon their parents saw 1290 



ROSALIND AND HELEN. 53 

The shadow of the peace denied to- them. 

And Eosalind, for when the living stem 

Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall, 

Died ere her time ; and with deep grief and awe 

The pale survivors followed her remains 1295 

Beyond the region of dissolving rains, 

Up the cold mountain she was wont to call 

Her tomb ; and on Chiavenna's precipice 

They raised a pyramid of lasting ice, 

Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, 130 ° 

Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun, 

The last, when it had sunk ; and thro' the night 

The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round 

Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home, 

Whose sad inhabitants each year would come, 1305 

With willing steps climbing that rugged height, 

And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound 

With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite, 

Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light: 

Such flowers, as in the Avintry memory bloom 1310 

Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb. 

Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould, 

Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led 

Into the peace of his dominion cold : 

She died among her kindred, being old. 1315 

And know, that if love die not in the dead 

As in the living, none of mortal kind 

Are blest, as noAv Helen and Eosalind. 



LINES 

WKITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS, 
October, 1818. 



Many a green isle needs must be 

In the deep wide sea of misery, 

Or the mariner, worn and wan, 

Never thus could voyage on 

Day and night, and night and day, 

Drifting on his dreary way, 

With the solid darkness black 

Closing round his vessel's track ; 

Whilst above the sunless sky, 

Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 

And behind the tempest fleet 

Hurries on with lightning feet, 

Eiving sail, and cord, and plank, 

Till the ship has almost drank 

Death from the o'er-brimming deep ; 15 

And sinks down, down, like that sleep 

When the dreamer seems to be 

Weltering through eternity ; 

And the dim low line before 



10 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 55 

Of a dark and distant shore 20 

Still recedes, as ever still 

Longing with divided will, 

But no power to seek or shun, 

He is ever drifted on 

O'er the unreposing wave 26 

To the haven of the grave. 

What, if there no friends will greet ; 

What, if there no heart will meet 

His with love' s impatient beat ; 

Wander wheresoe'er he may, 30 

Can he dream before that day 

To find refuge from distress 

In friendship's smile, in love's caress ? 

Then 'twill wreak him little woe 

Whether such there be or no : S5 

Senseless is the breast, and cold, 

Which relenting love would fold ; 

Bloodless are the veins and chill 

Which the pulse of pain did fill ; 

Every little living nerve 40 

That from bitter words did swerve 

Eound the tortured lips and brow, 

Are like sapless leaflets now 1 

Frozen upon December's bough. 

1 Mr. Rossetti substitutes for this others by his substituted reading . . . 

line Shelley has indulged in a loose and 

Is like a sapless leaflet now ; obsolete construction which may or 

and says in a note that he has " res- may not be defensible ; I should not 

cued these lines (with some conscious- at the present day permit it to myself, 

ness of audacity) from the annoying or condone it in another ; and had the 

grammatical solecism of the original — editor been engaged in the revision of 

'Every little living nerve a schoolboy's theme, he would cer- 

Are like sapless leaflets now.' " tainly have done right to correct such 

Mr. Swinburne says {Essays and a phrase, and as certainly would not 

Studies, pp. 228-9) — " If the editor have done wrong to add such further 

finds the license of such a phrase . . . too correction as he might deem desirable ; 

'annoying' to be endured by a scholas- but the task here undertaken is not 

tic sense of propriety, the annoyance exactly comparable to the revision of a 

is far keener which will be inflicted on schoolboy's theme." 



50 



56 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH KOSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

On the beach of a northern sea 

Which tempests shake eternally, 

As once the wretch there lay to sleep, 

Lies a solitary heap, 

One white skull and seven dry hones, 

On the margin of the stones, 

Where a few grey rushes stand, 

Boundaries of the sea and • land : 

Nor is heard one voice of wail 

But the sea-mews, as they sail 

O'er the billows of the gale; 55 

Or the whirlwind up and down 

Howling, like a slaughtered town, 

When a king in glory rides 

Through the pomp of fratricides : 

Those unburied bones around 60 

There is many a mournful sound ; 

There is no lament for him, 

Like a sunless vapour, dim, 

Who once clothed with life and thought 

What now moves nor murmurs not. 65 

Aye, many flowering islands lie 

In the waters of wide Agony : 

To such a one this morn was led, 

My bark by soft winds piloted : 

'Mid the 'mountains Euganean 70 

I stood listening to the paean, 

With which the legioned rooks did hail 

The sun's uprise majestical ; 

Gathering round with wings all hoar, 

Thro' the dewy mist they soar 75 

Like grey shades, till the 1 eastern heaven 

1 In Shelley's edition, the is con- in someone's idea of regularity ; but 
tracted into th', to bring the line with- Mrs. Shelley restores the. I say " re- 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAX HILLS. 07 

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, 

Flecked with fire and azure, lie 

In the unfathomable sky, 

So their plumes of purple grain, s0 

Starred with drops of golden rain, 

Gleam above the sunlight woods, 

As in silent multitudes 

On the morning's fitful gale 

Thro' the broken mist they sail, 85 

And the vapours cloven and gleaming 

Follow down the dark steep streaming, 

Till all is bright, and clear, and still, 

Bound the solitary hill. 

Beneath is spread like a green sea <J0 

The waveless plain of Lombardy, 

Bounded by the vaporous air, 

Islanded by cities fair ; 

Underneath day's azure eyes 

Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, - 95 

A peopled labyrinth of walls, 

Amphitrite's destined halls, 

Which her hoary sire now paves 

With his blue and beaming waves. 

Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 100 

Broad, red, radiant, half reclined 

On the level quivering line 

Of the waters crystalline 1 ; 

And before that chasm of light, 

As within a furnace bright, 105 

Column, tower, and dome, and spire, 

stores," because I cannot suppose for of Shelley's favourite item of punc- 

a moment that the contraction was tuation (the pause), I suspect it was 

Shelley's, — the line being quite in his Peacock, who, I am told by a friend 

manner without it. I do not know of his, cut out quantities of Shelley's 

who saw the volume through the pauses when revising for pi-ess. 
press ; but, from the general scarcity 1 In Shelley's edition, c h ry stall lac. 



58 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH KOSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

Shine like obelisks of fire, 

Pointing with inconstant motion 

From the altar of dark ocean 

To the sapphire-tinted skies; no 

As the flames of sacrifice 

From the marble shrines did rise, 

As to pierce the dome of gold 

Where Apollo spoke of old. 

Sun-girt 1 City, thou hast been 115 

Ocean's child, and then his queen; 

Now is come a darker day, 

And thou soon must be his prey, 

If the power that raised thee here 

Hallow so thy watery bier. 120 

A less drear ruin then than now, 

With thy conquest-branded brow 

Stooping to the slave of slaves 

From thy throne, among the waves 

Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew 125 

Flies, as once before it flew, 

O'er thine isles depopulate, 

And all is in its antient state, 

Save where many a palace gate 

With green sea-flowers overgrown 130 

Like a rock of ocean's own, 

Topples o'er the abandoned sea 

As the tides change sullenly. 



1 As to this beautiful epithet sun-girt, through with water, but not ringed 

I entirely agree with Mr. Swinburne, about. Seen by noon from the Eu- 

who says Mr. Palgrave's proposal ganean heights, clothed as with the 

(Golden Treasury, — Notes), to substi- very and visible glory of Italy, it 

tute sea-girt, " may look plausible, but might seem to Shelley a city girdled 

the new epithet is feeble, inadequate, with the sunlight, as some Nereid 

inaccurate. Venice is not a sea-girt with the arms of the sun-god." — 

city ; it is interlaced and interwoven Essays and Studies, p. 199. 
with sea, but not girdled ; pierced 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 59 

The fisher on his watery way, 

Wandering at the close of day, 135 

Will spread his sail and seize his oar 

Till he pass the gloomy shore, 

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep 

Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 

Lead a rapid masque of death uo 

O'er the waters of his path. 

Those who alone thy towers behold 

Quivering through aerial gold, 

As I now behold them here, 

Would imagine not they were 145 

Sepulchres, where human forms, 

Like pollution-nourished worms 

To the corpse of greatness cling, 

Murdered, and now mouldering : 

But if Freedom should awake 15 ° 

In her omnipotence, and shake 

From the Celtic Anarch's hold 

All the keys of dungeons cold, 

Where a hundred cities lie 

Chained like thee, ingloriously, 155 

Thou and all thy sister band 

Might adorn this sunny land, 

Twining memories of old time 

With new virtues more sublime ; 

If not, perish thou and they, ieo 

Clouds which stain truth's rising day 

By her sun consumed away, 

Earth can spare ye : while like flowers, 

In the waste of years and hours, 

From your dust new nations spring 165 

With more kindly blossoming. 



60 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH ROSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

Perish — let there only be 1 

Floating o'er thy hearthless sea 

As the garment of thy sky 

Clothes the world immortally, no 

One remembrance, more sublime 

Than the tattered pall of time, 

Which scarce hides thy visage wan ; — 

That a tempest-cleaving Swan 

Of the songs 2 of Albion, 1T5 

Driven from his ancestral streams 

By the might of evil dreams, 

Found a nest in thee ; and Ocean 

Welcomed him with such emotion 

That its joy grew his, and sprang 180 

From his lips like music flung 

O'er a mighty thunder-fit 

Chastening terror : — what though yet 

Poesy's unfailing Eiver, 

Which thro' Albion winds for ever 1S5 

Lashing with melodious wave 

Many a sacred Poet's grave, 

Mourn its latest nursling fled ? 

What though thou with all thy dead 

Scarce can for this fame repay 190 



1 This passage (lines 167 to 205) your to thy, and new to shall, in the 
seems to have been an after-thought. first line of the couplet. 
Mr. Frederick Locker possesses a copy 2 t canno t but think this word should 
of Rosalind and Helen, <fcc, containing be sons> no t songs. It has always, as 
the MS. interpolation sent after the f ar as I am aware, been printed songs; 
poem had gone to the publisher ; and an d it certainly is songs in Mr. Locker's 
with his kind permission I have fol- MS. This, however, is somewhat 
lowed that in preference to the printed hastily written ; and Shelley might 
text. The variations, though mime- easily have made such a clerical mistake 
rous, are very slight, being confined to as I SU spect ; but in the absence of any 
matters of pointing and " capitalling." other MS. the text must of course re- 
Shelley heads the passage thus : ma ia as it is,— the expression a swan 
" After the lines f the songs of A Ibion being conceivable, 
From thy dust shall nations spring and indeed being considered, by some 
With more kindly blossoming." critics with whom I have discussed 
Doubtless he quoted from memory, this point, more probable than a sican 
and had no intention of changing of the sons of Albion. 



LINES WEITTEX AMONG THE EUGAXEAX HILLS. 01 

Aught thine own ? oh, rather say 

Though thy sins and slaA r eries foul 

Overcloud a sunlike soul? 

As the ghost of Homer clings 

Round Scamander's wasting springs ; 195 

As divinest Shakespeare's might 

Fills Avon and the world with light 

Like omniscient power which he 

Imaged 'mid mortality ; 

As the love from Petrarch's urn, 200 

Yet amid yon hills doth burn, 

A quenchless lamp by which the heart 

Sees things unearthly ; — so thou art 

Mighty spirit — so shall be 

The City that did refuge thee. 205 

Lo, the sun floats up the sky 

Like thought-winged Liberty, 

Till the universal light 

Seems to level plain and height ; 

From the sea a mist has spread, 210 

And the beams of morn lie dead 

On the towers of Venice now, 

Like its glory long ago. 

By the skirts of that grey cloud 

Many-domed Padua proud 215 

Stands, a peopled solitude, 

'Mid the harvest-shining plain, 1 

"Where the peasant heaps his grain 

In the garner of his foe, 

And the milk-white oxen slow 220 



1 There is no hyphen to connect originally printed, it might mean that 

harvest &\\& shining in Shelley' sedition ; Padua stood shining plainly amid the 

and it is possible that he inadvertently harvest, whereas I take it Shelley 

omitted it, as he often did ; but I have meant that she stood amid the plain 

supplied it because, as the line was which was shining with harvest. 



62 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH ROSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

With the purple vintage strain, 

Heaped upon the creaking wain, 

That the brutal Celt may swill 

Drunken sleep with savage will ; 

And the sickle to the sword 225 

Lies unchanged, though many a lord, 

Like a weed whose shade is poison, 

Overgrows this region's foison, 1 

Sheaves of whom are ripe to come 

To destruction's harvest home : 230 

Men must reap the things they sow, 

Force from force must ever flow, 

Or worse ; but 'tis a bitter woe 

That love or reason cannot change 

The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. 235 

Padua, thou within whose walls 

Those mute guests at festivals, 

Son and Mother, Death and Sin, 

Played at dice for Ezzelin, 

Till Death cried, " I win, I win !" 240 

And Sin cursed to lose the wager, 

But Death promised, to assuage her, 

That he would petition for 

Her to be made Vice-Emperor, 

When the destined years were o'er, 245 

Over all. between the Po 

And the eastern Alpine snow, 

Under the mighty Austrian. 

Sin smiled so as Sin only can, 

And since that time, aye, long before, 250 

Both have ruled from shore to shore, 

That incestuous pair, who follow 

Tyrants as the sun the swallow, 

1 Printed foizon in Shelley's edition. 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. Go 

As Eepentance follows Crime, 

And as changes follow Time. 255 

In thine halls the lamp of learning, 

Padua, now no more is burning; 

Like a meteor, whose wild way 

Is lost over the grave of day, 

It gleams betrayed and to betray : 260 

Once remotest nations came 

To adore that sacred flame, 

When it lit not many a hearth 

On this cold and gloomy earth : 

Now new fires from antique light 205 

Spring beneath the wide world's might ; 

But their spark lies dead in thee, 

Trampled out by tyranny. 

As the Norway woodman quells, 

In the depth of piny dells, 270 

One light flame among the brakes, 

While the boundless forest shakes, 

And its mighty trunks are torn 

By the fire thus lowly born : 

The spark beneath his feet is dead, 275 

He starts to see the flames it fed 

Howling through the darkened sky 

With a myriad tongues victoriously, 

And sinks down in fear: so thou, 

Tyranny, 1 beholdest now 280 

Light around thee, and thou hearest 

The loud flames ascend, and fearest : 

Grovel on the earth : aye, hide 

In the dust thy purple pride ! 

Noon descends around me now : 285 

1 Tyranny with a small t in Shelley's edition. 



64 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH ROSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, 

When a soft and purple mist 

Like a vaporous amethyst, 

Or an air-dissolved star 

Mingling light and fragrance, far 290 

From the curved horizon's hound 

To the point of heaven's profound, 

Fills the overflowing sky ; 

And the plains that silent lie 

Underneath, the leaves unsodden 205 

Where the infant frost has trodden 

With his morning-winged feet, 

Whose bright print is gleaming yet; 

And the red and golden vines, 

Piercing with their trellised lines 300 

The rough, dark-skirted wilderness ; 

The dun and bladed grass no less, - 

Pointing from this hoary tower 

In the windless air; the flower 

Glimmering at my feet ; the line 305 

Of the olive-sandalled Apennine 

In the south dimly islanded ; 

And the Alps, whose snows are spread 

High between the clouds and sun; 

And of living things each one ; 310 

And my spirit which so long 

Darkened this swift stream of song, 

Interpenetrated -lie 

By the glory of the sky : 

Be it love, light, harmony, 315 

Odour, or the soul of all 

Which from heaven like dew cloth fall, 

Or the mind which feeds this verse 

Peopling the lone universe. 



LINES WKITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 65 

Noon descends, and after noon 320 

Autumn's evening meets me soon, 

Leading the infantine moon, 

And that one star, which to her 

Almost seems to minister 

Half the crimson light she brings 325 

From the sunset's radiant springs : 

And the soft dreams of the morn, 

(Which like winged winds had borne 

To that silent isle, which lies 

'Mid remembered agonies, 330 

The frail bark of this lone being,) 

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, 

And its ancient pilot, Pain, 

Sits beside the helm again. 

Other flowering isles must be 335 

In the sea of life and agony : 

Other spirits float and flee 

O'er that gulph : even now, perhaps, 

On some rock the wild wave wraps, 

With folded wings they waiting sit 340 

For my bark, to pilot it 

To some calm and blooming cove, 

Where for me, and those I love, 

May a windless bower be built, 

Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 345 

In a dell 'mid lawny hills, 

Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 

And soft sunshine, and the sound 

Of old forests echoing round, 

And the light and smell divine 350 

Of all flowers that breathe and shine : 

We may live so happy there, 

That the spirits of the air, 

E 



66 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH ROSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

Envying us, may even entice 

To our healing paradise 355 

The polluting multitude ; 

But their rage would be subdued 

By that clime divine and calm, 

And the winds whose wings rain balm 

On the uplifted soul, and leaves 360 

Under which the bright sea heaves; 

While each breathless interval 

In their whisperings musical 

The inspired soul supplies 

With its own deep melodies, 365 

And the love which heals all strife 

Circling, like the breath of life, 

All things in that sweet abode 

With its own mild brotherhood : 

They, not it would change ; and soon 370 

Every sprite beneath the moon 

Would repent its envy vain, 

And the earth grow young again. 



HYMN 



TO 



INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 1 



The awful shadow of some unseen Power 
Moats tho' unseen amongst 2 us, — visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, — 
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, 



1 This poem was published in The Ex- 
aminer for 19 January, 1817 (No. 473), 
having been, as the Editor remarks, 
" originally announced under the 
signature of the Elfin Kniyh t." In the 
meantime the authorship had become 
known to the editor ; and the poem 
was duly signed, on its appearance, 
with the name Percy B. Shelley. 
I suspect that Shelley read a proof of 
this poem before it appeared in The 
Examiner, or else that it was pretty 
correctly printed from a very careful 
copy. The punctuation is wholly dif- 
ferent in system from that of the 
version in the Rosalind and Helen 
volume ; and, referring to the remark 
made in a former note (p. 57) as to 
Peacock's practice of removing the 
pauses so constantly used by Shelley, 
it should' be observed that this Hymn, 
as printed in The Examiner, has no 
less than twenty- one pauses in it, 
while the other version has not a single 



one left, the whole being replaced by 
more orthodox points. Moreover Shel- 
ley was in England when the Examiner 
version appeared, while, from the 
preface to the Rosalind volume, it 
would seem that he did not even know 
the Hymn was to be in that volume, 
— so that he is not likely to have pre- 
pared that version. On the whole 
therefore, I think it safer to give the 
earlier version, which presents no im- 
portant difference from the other, 
except in this matter of ptmctuation, 
and in the few particulars specified 
in the following notes. Mrs. Shelley 
tells us in her note on Poems of 1816 
that the Hymn " was conceived dur- 
ing his voyage round the Lake [of 
Geneva] with Lord Byron." 

2 In the version of 1819, among, 
instead of amongst, — one point in 
which that version seems to me prefer- 
able to the other, — more Shelley-like 
in instinct for sound. 



E 



68 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH ROSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance ; 

Like hues and harmonies of evening, — 

Like clouds in starlight widely spread, — 

Like memory of music fled, — 

Like aught that for its grace may be 

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 

2. 

Spirit of Beauty, that dost 1 consecrate 

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 
Of human thought or form, — where art thou gone ? 

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, 

This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? 
Ask why the sunlight not for ever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river, 

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shewn, 
Why fear and dream 2 and death and birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom, — why man has such a scope 

Eor love and hate, despondency and hope ? 



No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 
To sage or poet these responses given — 
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, 
Eemain the records of their vain endeavour, 
Frail spells — whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, 
From all we hear and all we see, 
Doubt, chance, and mutability. 
Thy light alone — like mist o'er mountains driven, 



1 In The Examiner, dost ; but doth ing MS. variation in this line,— care 
in the Rosalind and Helen volume. and pain for fear and dream,— is 

2 Mr. Garnett tells me an interest- shewn by Sir Percy Shelley's MS. 



HYMjST to intellectual beauty. 69 

Or music by the night wind sent, 
Thro' strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 



Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent, 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. 

Thou messenger of sympathies, 

That wax and wane in lovers' 2 eyes — 
Thou — that to human thought art 3 nourishment, 

Like darkness to a dying flame ! 

Depart not as thy shadow came, 

Depart not — lest. the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality. 



While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, 

I was not heard — I saw them not — 

When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 

All vital things that wake to bring 

News of birds and blossoming, — 



1 Mr. Garnett tells me this stanza is stead ©f lovers'. 

not in the original draft. 3 In the Rosalind and Helen ver- 

2 In both the Examiner version and sion, we read are for art. 
that of 1819, this word is lover's in- 



70 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH KOSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy l 1 



I vowed that I wonld dedicate my powers 

To thee and thine — have I not kept the vow ? 
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now 
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 
Each from his voiceless grave : they have in visioned bowers 

Of studious zeal or love's 2 delight 

Outwatched with me the envious night — 
They know that never joy illumed my brow 

Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 

This world from its dark slavery, 

That thou — awful Loveliness, 
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 3 



1 Spelt extacy in both versions. 

2 We read loves instead of love's, 
both in the version printed in The 
Examiner, and in that published with 
Rosalind and Helen. 

3 There can be but little doubt that 
these two stanzas (5 and 6) have re- 
ference to the same awakening of 
Shelley's spirit to its sublime mission, 
referred to in another passage of like 
autobiographic value, namely stanzas 
3, 4, and 5 of the Dedication to Laon 
and Cythna (pp. 102 and 103). In a 
note on those stanzas the question 
whether the awakening was at Eton 
or at Brentford is referred to ; and 
whichever be the correct version as 
to period and locality in that case is 
also correct as to this. The passage 
in Sir John Eennie's Autobiography 
alluded to there seems to me to corre- 
spond still more strikingly with these 
two stanzas of the Hymn than with 
the version of the same spiritual 
situation in the Dedication ; and I 
have therefore reserved the following 
extract from the Autobiography as 
more fitting to be given here than 
there : — " During the time that I was 



there the most remarkable scholar 
was the celebrated poet Percy Bysshe 
Shelley, who was then about twelve 
or thirteen (as far as I can remember), 
and even at that early age exhibited 
considerable poetical talent, accom- 
panied by a violent and extremely 
excitable temper, which manifested 
itself in all kinds of eccentricities. 
...His imagination was always roving 
upon something romantic and ex- 
traordinary, such as spirits, fairies, 
fighting, volcanoes, &c, and he not 
unfrequently astonished his school- 
fellows by blowing up the boundary 
palings of the playground with gun- 
powder, also the lid of his desk in the 
middle of schooltime, to the great 
surprise of Dr. Greenlaw himself and 
the whole school. In fact, at times 
he was considered to be almost upon 
the borders of insanity ; yet with all 
this, when treated with kindness, he 
was very amiable, noble, high-spirited, 
and generous ; he used to write verse, 
English and Latin, with considerable 
facility, and attained a high position in 
the school before he left for Eton where 
I understand, he was equally, if not 



HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY, 



71 



The day becomes more solemn and serene 
When noon is past — there is a harmony 
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 

Which thro' the summer is not heard or seen, 

As if it could not he, as if it had not been ! 
Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
Of nature on my passive youth 

Descended, to my onward life supply 

Its calm — to one who worships thee, 
And every form containing thee, 1 
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 

To fear himself, and love all human kind. 



more, extraordinary and eccentric." 
In reading this beside the two stanzas 
in the Hymn, allowance must of course 
be made for the difference between a 
poet's conception of incidents in his 
sensitive and persecuted boyhood, and 
another man's conception of those 
same incidents as seen by a school- 
fellow, who probably, like most of the 
schoolfellows that any of us can recall, 
would have no sympathy whatever 
with a boy like Shelley. The dryly 
recorded fact that he wrote " verse, 
English and Latin, with considerable 
facility," is probably the best corro- 
borative evidence we can get of that 
vowed service to the spirit of Intel- 
lectual Beauty recorded by the poet 
in the words 



I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
To thee and thine. 

1 The repetition here of the word 
thee, instead of finding a rhyme, is 
highly significant of deliberate inten- 
tion, and certainly tends to confirm 
the view expressed in some of the 
notes on analogous and similar in- 
stances throughout Laon and Cythna, 
that it is not safe to regard such cases 
as "metric irregularities." In this 
case there could have been no possible 
difficulty (as there sometimes would 
be in the complex stanzas of Laon 
and Cythna) ; and I should look upon 
it as almost certain that here, at all 
events, the repetition of the word was 
well considered with regard to effect. 



72 POEMS PUBLISHED WITH ROSALIND AND HELEN, 1819. 



SONNET. 1 

OZYMANDIAS. 

I met a traveller from an antique land 
Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed : 
And on the pedestal these words appear : 
" My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair !" 
Nothing beside remains. Eound the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 



1 In Mr. Middleton's Shelley and His friendly strife. Lord Houghton (Vol. 

Writings (Vol. II, p. 71) we are told 1, p. 99) merely introduces the three 

that Shelley, Keats, and Leigh Hunt Sonnets with the words, " These are 

" tried to excel each other in writing the three sonnets on the Nile here 

a sonnet on the Nile ;" and he adds alluded to, and very characteristic 

that Shelley's Ozymandias " was one they are." At all events it is to be 

of these." He gives no authority for remarked that this is not a sonnet on 

this latter statement ; and I presume the Nile, and that, among the Leigh 

it rests upon the fact that Lord Hunt MSS. placed at my disposal by 

Houghton, in his Life, Letters, and Mr. Townshend Mayer, there is a 

Literary Remains of John Keats, ap- sonnet in Shelley's handwriting ad- 

pends the Ozymandias Sonnet, with dressed " To the Nile," — which will 

those of Keats and Hunt, to the duly appear in this edition of his 

letter in which Keats recounts the works. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 525 333 



